Hello everyone, I hope you have enjoyed reading the first post in this interview series. This is the continuation of the interview with author Debby G. Kaye and Linda Gray Sexton. Please check their bios out via the links you can see below.

Let’s check out the answers for question #2 from them.

“Why do you choose to write this genre and not anything else? What’s the reason or motivation behind it?”

I love to write nonfiction because I enjoy talking about real-life experiences and delving into reasons behind why things happen and results from the repercussions. I like to examine the flaws in events and characters and pull the life lessons from them.

I also write fiction, but I find I feel most absolutely comfortable writing memoir. I am motivated to tell what I see as the truth about my own life as a way of offering to readers a story with which they can identify. After publishing my first two memoirs, which were candid and sometimes dark, I was overwhelmed with people writing to me and telling me that I had told their story, and that they were grateful for that. It was a way of giving voice to all they had experienced on that particular subject and they felt less alone for it. With Bespotted, my third memoir, I also got an immense amount of mail from people sharing the experience, but this time it was happiness and joy with which they identified, which was a refreshing change at this time in my life.

Great answers, ladies! I think it is absolutely wonderful to write true stories because it gives the writer the pleasure of helping others to voice out.

I’ll be posting the answers to the second question next: “How was the response from your family and friends when you first published a book?”

I love to read memoirs because I like to read about other people’s lives–the obstacles they’ve encountered in life and how they overcame them. I am also interested in the psychology of human behavior, the cause and effect of human behavior in light of the fact that no two people experience the same thing exactly the same way. I think awareness brings about understanding and compassion.